


In the Dark Midwinter, Light

by rhysiana



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alan Deaton Mentioned, Derek Hale Deserves Nice Things, Getting Together, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Made-Up Werewolf Traditions, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Snowed In, Winter Solstice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 15:58:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17103617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhysiana/pseuds/rhysiana
Summary: Really, Derek and Stiles being sent to an empty druid's cabin to fetch a book for Deaton and then getting snowed in could have gone so, so much worse.





	In the Dark Midwinter, Light

**Author's Note:**

> I told myself I'd get this done while it was still the solstice, and it's still technically before midnight in California, so that totally still counts. Happy Winter Solstice, everyone!

“I can’t believe I let you insist on driving the Jeep,” Derek said, sourly evaluating the mess of duct tape and, god, he couldn’t even imagine, gum, probably, that held the poor vehicle’s innards together before slamming the hood in resignation. Snow promptly began to cover it again.

“Roscoe and I have been apart all semester!” Stiles protested, petting the door handle in apology. “Parking permits for campus are so expensive it should be a crime.”

Derek had heard all of this before. At length. He actually sympathized, a little, enough that he’d given in to Stiles’ pleading, but he was hardly going to admit it. He turned back to the cabin behind him. “Well, at least we made it here, even if we can’t get back.”

Stiles surveyed the structure skeptically. “Why does Deaton have a cabin in the middle of nowhere again? And why does he keep a bunch of reference books here?”

Derek shrugged as he stomped up the stairs, trying to knock as much snow off his boots as he could. “My impression is he inherited it from some other druid.”

He fished the key Deaton have given them out of his pocket and hoped the man had been out here recently enough that it still worked. He breathed a silent sigh of relief when the door swung open without him having to break anything. Glancing back out at the ever-thickening snow, he suspected they’d need every bit of insulation against the weather they could get.

“Come on. Get inside while there’s still enough light to see what kind of supplies we’ve got.”

Stiles darted back to the Jeep and then returned, waving a flashlight in Derek’s face. “It pays to be prepared, my dude.”

Derek rolled his eyes and gestured inside impatiently. The sooner he could get the door shut and some sort of heat going, the happier he’d be. Stiles, even with all his layers, certainly wasn’t equipped to deal with prolonged cold.

A quick glance around the interior of the cabin was heartening, though. Either Deaton kept this place stocked for emergencies or the last owner had _really_ enjoyed their solitude, because there was an almost alarming number of canned goods in the pantry closet, plus not just one but two five-gallon containers of oil for the row of waiting lamps on the top shelf. Derek looked back over his shoulder to comment on it to Stiles, but he was already lost to the bookshelves, flashlight absentmindedly wedged into a shelf so he could use both hands to eagerly pull things out.

Derek shook his head and went to check the heating situation. A wood stove, it looked like, which meant there was hopefully an obvious woodpile nearby; he’d go look in a second. A trunk at the foot of the bed (which was thankfully a double; the couch was only a loveseat and he didn’t really relish the idea of either of them trying to sleep on it) proved to be full of extra blankets. Perhaps this would be a survivable experience after all. How novel for them.

Stiles’ head snapped up from the book in his hands as soon as Derek opened the door. “What’s wrong? Where are you going?”

“Nothing, Stiles, I’m just going to look for the woodpile, I’ll be right back.”

“Oh. Do you need help?”

Derek looked outside, where the snow was starting to blow sideways, and weighed the advantage of having two people to carry wood versus how long it’d take to get Stiles warmed back up once they got back inside. He settled on the side of expediency. “Sure. Come on.”

Stiles’ immediate gasp of “Oh my _god_!” as soon as they stepped fully out into the wind had Derek questioning his decision, though. He really should have gone out to find the wood on his own at first, only let Stiles come out when he knew where they were going. Shit. Too late now, of course; Stiles would never admit defeat.

Stiles was skirting his way around the edge of the cabin, sticking close to the walls to cut down on the wind. “Where the hell is this stupid pile, anyway? Shouldn’t it be right here?”

Derek shook his head, then realized Stiles could probably barely see him, squinting his eyes against the wind as he was. “Storing wood long-term against the side of a house is how you get termites. It’ll be set out a ways. We can put some extra on the porch while we’re here, though.”

Stiles pulled to an abrupt stop. “Derek. How long do you think we’re going to _be_ here?”

“Depends on how long the snow keeps up and what’s wrong with your Jeep.”

“Awesome,” Stiles muttered. “This is not exactly how I envisioned spending my winter break.”

Derek felt a sinking sensation in his gut at that and elected to ignore the entire comment. “There,” he said, and started forging a path through the snow over to the semi-covered woodpile set up between two trees a short distance from the cabin. A strong gust of wind blew a swirl of snow up around them, and he reached back without thinking to grab the edge of Stiles’ jacket to keep him close.

Stiles yelped in surprise and stumbled a step before catching himself. “Do you think this storm is natural? It’s coming down suspiciously fast.”

Derek shrugged. “Hold out your arms.” He started loading Stiles’ arms with as many logs as it seemed likely he’d be able to carry, then started gathering his own load. “You’d have a better idea than I would about whether magic is involved. But we’re up a lot further into the mountains here than Beacon Hills. Could just be the weather.”

The wind whipped their words away on the way back, so they made the fortunately short trek in unaccustomed silence, which made Derek extra alarmed when he saw how much Stiles was shivering by the time they made it to the porch. Was he _too cold_ to complain?

“Drop the wood, Stiles. Get inside and let me deal with it.”

Stiles just nodded and ducked inside, a further worrying sign. Derek set aside an armful of wood to bring in and stacked the rest of their haul by the door as quickly as he could.

He came in to find Stiles’ jacket and shoes dripping next to the door, and Stiles himself wearing the blanket from the back of the couch like a cape as he stood in front of the bookshelf again. He’d forgotten the flashlight entirely and had a mage light bobbing over his shoulder. Derek doubted he even realized he’d done it. (Deaton had lamented, in his typically understated way, that Stiles seemed to have nearly prodigious abilities at time, but only in extremis or when he wasn’t paying any attention at all.)

“Find anything?” he asked as he crossed to the woodstove.

Stiles looked over with his eyebrows raised in question.

“About the weather,” Derek clarified, opening the stove and starting to arrange the first logs. “I just assumed that’s what you were looking for this time.”

“Not ye—ah, here!” Stiles exclaimed, hitching the blanket up so he could pull a book off the shelf.

He retreated to the couch with his prize and Derek fished in the bucket next to the stove for some old newspaper and a box of long matches to get everything going before joining him. He’d just started to sit down when he saw he still had his boots on, the snow starting to fall off in clumps onto the rag rug that seemed to demarcate the living room area. He rerouted to the door with a sigh and bent to unknot the laces.

“Oh, maybe it’s because it’s the solstice,” Stiles said thoughtfully, and Derek heard him turn the page.

Derek froze for a second. He hadn’t even registered the date. “Is it?”

“Yeah, the 21st. Plus this year it’s a full moon, too. Well, nearly. I guess the _full_ full moon is technically tomorrow. If this is a particularly magically active spot, it might be, like,” he rolled his hand in the air, searching for word, “an intentionally encouraged symbolic event? That it was just our bad luck to get stuck in. I can’t believe Deaton sent us here today. You’d think he would have known.”

Derek took his time arranging his shoes next to the door, and then Stiles’ for good measure, before he went back to the couch. Stiles immediately stuck his feet under Derek’s leg, but then looked at him more sharply. Derek sighed internally.

“What is it? It’s something about the solstice. Is it bad? I can try to set up wards or something—”

Derek shook his head quickly to cut Stiles off. “No, it’s not… it’s not _bad_. It’s just… this was my family’s biggest holiday. We did Christmas, but Winter Solstice was always more meaningful.” He looked over Stiles shoulder to the window, where it was still daylight, but mostly just white as the snow continued. “Especially if it coincided with a full moon.”

Stiles closed his book and focused fully on Derek, always a disconcerting experience. “Yeah? What would you do?”

Derek closed his eyes, letting the wave of memories and feelings he’d spent every winter since the fire ignoring as best he could wash over him. The warmth of the house, the laughter, cookies cooling on the counter to be decorated later, tromping through the Preserve for greenery, a trip to the Christmas tree farm on the other side of town for garlands, decking the house, just… family. And the moon, who loved them and would protect them until the sun returned. How could he possibly condense all of that, or even just a part?

“We had this ritual,” he said, a little hesitantly, “for that night, after the house was all decorated with greenery and candles in all the windows, and a garland down the banister of the stairs and over the fireplace in the living room, where we’d turn out all the lights in the house, one by one, until everything was completely dark, and go out in the yard to stand under the moon.”

He slanted a look at Stiles and saw him just barely start to open his mouth. “No, not to howl.”

Stiles wormed further under his blanket with a bitten back smirk.

“It was just… in thanks and celebration that this was her longest night, I guess. We didn’t have, like, a speech or anything. It was just a feeling, like the night belonged to us especially. And we’d run.” It had felt so easy, so free. He doubted he’d ever feel like that again. “And then my mom would call us all back in, and we’d light the candles in all the windows, one by one again, and the fire in the fireplace, and turn on the lights on the Christmas tree, and then all the lights on the ground floor, until the whole house was nothing but light. To welcome back the sun, my mom said.” He smiled down at his hands. “We kids all loved it because we got to stay up as late as we wanted. Although after the run, we rarely made it all the way until dawn.”

He had done it that last year, though, before the fire, and he still remembered the sight of that chilly sunrise. Tired and bleary-eyed and euphoric, it really had seemed like something… holy. Like something new being reborn.

Stiles snaked a hand out from under the blanket and gripped Derek’s shoulder silently for a minute before uncocooning himself in a mild flurry of limbs. “Let’s see what we can find for dinner.”

Derek blinked and looked around the cabin, noting it had suddenly gotten a lot darker. Stiles’ mage light flickered out as his attention shifted to the pantry contents and he cursed. “Stupid, useless thing,” Derek heard him mutter, before he raised his voice to say, “Derek, could you bring me that flashlight?”

“I can do you better than that,” Derek said, reaching over Stiles to the lanterns on the top shelf.

“Oh, cool!” Stiles said when he saw them. “Very rustic. This druid really knew how to commit to a theme.”

Derek tried to smother his smile as he carried the lanterns and oil out to the table to fill them. Carefully, he lit them, using one of the long matches from the woodstove, his mother’s solstice night lectures about candle safety echoing through his mind.

He left one on the table in the kitchen area for Stiles and took the others to place strategically around the cabin: one on the table next to the couch, another by the bed, the last on the hook he found on the wall next to the bathroom. In truth, by the time he was done, it was brighter than he usually bothered to keep his loft. Warmer, too. He went to check on the stove, which was fortunately burning steady and hot, the chimney seeming to have no issues with draw, much to his relief.

He jumped at the _click, click, click, whoosh_ behind him and Stiles grimaced in apology. “It’s gas,” he said, gesturing to the cooktop. “Sorry. Are you… you know, okay with all this fire?”

There had been, admittedly, several years where he hadn’t been, but it was manageable now, and it wasn’t like they could really do without any of it at the moment. “It’s fine.”

Stiles looked at him skeptically.

“Really.”

“Well, go sit down or something, I got this.”

“I could help…”

“Please,” Stiles scoffed. “I’ve been making myself dinner since I was eleven. This type of food here?” He waved at the cans and boxes in the pantry. “This is exactly my wheelhouse.”

Derek’s stomach tightened at the thought of Stiles having to become that self-sufficient that young, but silence was clearly the better part of valor here. He wandered over to the bookshelves instead. “Did we ever actually find the book Deaton wanted?”

“Uh, no.” The back of Stiles’ neck flushed, which Derek took to mean he’d gotten too distracted when looking earlier, and Stiles dug in his back pocket for a moment before holding out a piece of paper behind him. “Here, it’s in Latin so I wrote it down.”

By the time Derek found it, half hidden behind one of the shelf supports on one of the lowest shelves, Stiles was done.

“Voila!” he announced, putting the plates on the table, followed by forks and two glasses of water.

“What is it?” Derek asked.

Stiles narrowed his eyes at him, and Derek raised an eyebrow.

“I’m just asking if it has a name, I wasn’t making a comment.”

Stiles looked away and shrugged. “No name. It’s just the ‘what we’ve got’ dish. If we’d had milk or butter, I could have done more, but this turned out okay.”

At the first mouthful of the pasta and stew-like sauce, Derek was forced to agree. Stiles could definitely tell, because he grinned.

“There was a lot of trial and error that went into figuring out what things went with what. Scott could tell you. He ate a lot of my failures.”

“Can’t have been too bad,” Derek noted. “You’re both still alive.”

“True.” Stiles looked vaguely surprised Derek would express even that much faith in him, and seeing it sat wrong in Derek’s chest.

***

After dinner, Derek took the dishes to the sink and Stiles peered out the window into the darkness.

“I think the snow finally stopped.”

Derek cocked his head to the side and listened. Now that Stiles mentioned it, it did sound like the barely noticeable hiss of snow against the roof had stopped. “Maybe we’ll get out of here tomorrow after all.”

Stiles watched him speculatively as Derek finished drying the plates.

“What?”

Slowly, Stiles reached out and turned down the lantern beside the couch until it went out.

Derek’s breath caught. Then he nodded and turned down the one on the dining table. They each moved to the other lamps, Derek turning down the one by the bathroom first, then Stiles extinguishing the one by the bed. A slight red glow from the woodstove was all that was left, and Derek felt… at peace.

“I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stay out there,” Stiles said softly, “but do you want to go out and see if the clouds have broken enough to see the moon?”

Derek swallowed and nodded, not sure that Stiles could see, but he assumed moving to put his shoes on would make his answer clear in any case.

Stiles did the same, shoulder knocking companionably into Derek’s as he balanced on one foot and then the other. After they’d both shrugged into their jackets as well, Derek quickly crossed to the couch and grabbed the blanket as well, throwing it around Stiles’ shoulders before he opened the door. Stiles made a vaguely irritated sound, but kept the blanket.

They stepped out into the snow-covered yard and looked to the sky. The wispy tail of a cloud broke apart just then to reveal the moon, and the cold, clear light, from above and from its reflection off the snow below, surrounded Derek so completely all he could do was close his eyes and breathe through it. Was this what he had been missing every year since the fire? Somehow he didn’t think so; he and Laura had tried one year in New York and it had felt nothing like renewal and rebirth, only pain and loss. This time, though, this time felt like… family and belonging and life and hope.

He opened his eyes again and looked to the side, where Stiles was standing next to him, still looking at the moon, eyes shining. _Oh_. Derek knew, of course, that mourning and grief and, in large part, the simple passage of time had brought him out of those truly dark days, but Stiles being here, now, in this moment…

It would not have been this moment without him. Slowly, tentatively, so afraid he was going to break the magic but also not wanting to stop, he reached out and caught Stiles hand. “Thank you,” he whispered.

Stiles looked over at him and smiled. “For what?”

“For being here.”

Stiles leaned in and bumped their shoulders again. “Nowhere I’d rather be.”

As much as Derek wanted to take that sentiment at face value, he raised an eyebrow. “What was that earlier about this not being how you planned to spend your winter break?”

Stiles huffed a disbelieving laugh, breath steaming in the air. “Only because I could never have imagined ending up here. And I have a really vivid imagination, Derek.”

Emboldened, Derek reached up with his other hand to brush Stiles’ cheek. Stiles leaned in, easily, as naturally as breathing, and their kiss, out there in the cold air, under the light of the solstice moon, felt like coming home.

***

Eventually, though, Stiles started to shiver, even wrapped in the blanket and in Derek’s arms, and Derek pulled him back inside. As soon as he had his shoes and jacket off again, Stiles crossed to stand directly in front of the woodstove, holding his fingers out to the heat and sighing happily. Derek brushed a hand lightly against the small of his back as he passed him to fetch the lanterns, moving them until they were each standing on a windowsill.

He turned to find the matches again, and Stiles stopped him, wrapping his arms around Derek’s waist with a smile. “Let me,” he said, and tiny balls of light flew from his fingertips to each lantern in turn.

“Deaton said you can only really do magic when you’re not paying attention.”

Stiles snorted and kept his arms wrapped around Derek. “Deaton just doesn’t like the fact my magic doesn’t respond to peaceful, placid meditation like his does. Mine actually responds to heightened emotions.” He grinned at Derek and then kissed him on the cheek like he couldn’t stop himself. “And right now? I am very, very happy.”

As if to prove his point, a larger mage light popped into existence over their heads, soft and dim at first, but brightening slowly as their mouths found each other again.

“You know,” Derek said lowly into Stiles’ ear, sounding far more gruff and wrecked than he’d expected from simply making out in the middle of the room, “there are other traditional ways to celebrate the solstice night.”

“Yeah?” Stiles managed between kisses to the side of Derek’s neck. “You gonna show them to me?”

Derek wanted nothing more. Fortunately it was only a few steps to get them to the bed. There, in the pure light of the moon through the window and the warm glow from the lantern on the sill, he and Stiles undressed each other, hands and lips and teeth and breath whispering over skin, all brand new exploration and long-awaited homecoming at once.

“I’ve wanted this for so long, you have no idea,” Stiles said, clutching at Derek’s back and burying his face in the crook of Derek’s neck.

Derek rolled them over and settled Stiles even more firmly against him. “I’m not sure if I was ready before.” Stiles raised himself up on his elbows and ran his fingers along the edges of Derek’s face, smoothing his forehead and running back into his hair. Derek let himself bask in it. “I think I would have just screwed it up before. I wouldn’t have believed in it.”

“Are you saying you believe it now?” Stiles asked incredulously. “I keep thinking this is something I’ve dreamed.”

Derek leaned up and bit him lightly on the shoulder. “Yes, I believe this. Your feet are entirely too cold to be something I’m making up.”

“Hey!” Stiles gasped, mock offended, and poked him in the ribs. “Guess you better warm me up then.”

Derek grinned, and rolled them again, Stiles laughing all the way.

Above them, the mage light blazed triumphantly.

***

The bedding was all a rumpled disaster long before they were done, so they rearranged everything until they ended up with the pillows at the foot of the bed, Stiles with his head on Derek’s chest, flushed and beautiful, watching the sun come up over the tops of the snow-covered trees through the window.

“We did it,” Stiles murmured sleepily as the mage light finally fizzled into a shower of pale sparks. “We brought the sun back.”

“Yes,” Derek said into his hair, pulling the quilt higher and then twisting as much as he was able to grab one of the extra blankets as well, “you did.”

He fell asleep feeling renewed.


End file.
